Turner Prize 2024: has the art world's infamous award lost its power?

Once the "enfant terrible" of the contemporary art world, as the Turner Prize returns to London's Tate Britain for its 40th anniversary it feels "knackered, creaking, and past it", said Laura Freeman in The Times.

"I wish there was some headline-worthy stunt," akin to Tracey Emin's unmade bed or Chris Ofili's elephant dung, but the offering this year is "too flat and inadequate to summon much fury". As it stands, the exhibition feels "utterly moribund": it's time to "revamp this sorry embarrassment of a prize or retire it completely".

'Tunnel vision'

The jury's "craven capitulation to inclusivity" makes it feel as if the artists that made the shortlist this year have been selected entirely because of their "personal identities" rather than their art, said Florence Hallett on the i news site.

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And while the exhibition steers clear of the "previous pitfalls" around gender and ethnicity – most of the artists this year are women, from a variety of cultural backgrounds and ages – the art itself has a "shocking case of tunnel vision".

Avoiding rocking the boat with any "provocations", the jury have stuck to a "trusty formula", said Alistair Sooke in The Telegraph. There's no sign of the Turner Prize letting its hair down for its 40th birthday: the latest edition is the most "conventional and uptight" in years. It's about as "raucous as a drinks party in a seminary".

'Curiously repressed'

Filipino-born artist Pio Abad takes today's "hottest issues", such as the legacy of colonialism, and "lowers their temperature to zero degrees", Sooke said. His "elegant, considered" ink-and-screenprint works feel "ice cold" and "curiously repressed".

Then, there's Delaine La Bas, a British artist with a Romani background. She should, "on paper, provide some spark", but her "whimsical faux-naif paintings" are "pretty, not primal". "The ambience is, again, too civilised, too tame."

Elsewhere, Jasleen Kaur has drawn on her South Asian and Glaswegian heritage to create a series of installations from "mundane objects" including a Ford Escort draped in a "giant crocheted doily", said Hallett. But the installation "fails to spark empathy or even curiosity", and is "more boring than stirring".

The "booming music" from Kaur's exhibition "obliterates" what should be a reflective atmosphere at Abad's offering next door, added Freeman in The Times. It's like "sitting next to some obnoxious yob on the bus blasting music from their headphones".

'Wildly divergent intentions'

While it's unlikely the Turner Prize will ever reach the "pearl-clutching front-page heights" of the nineties and noughties, I really enjoyed the show this year, said Nancy Durrant in the London Evening Standard. Each of the artists on the shortlist brings a "unique perspective" and "distinctive approach".

Claudette Johnson's large-scale canvases of Black figures feel like a "different show": "my, they're special". "Young Man in Blue" is "just beautiful – watchful, powerful". Johnson will be the "one to beat" this year.

All of the artists have a "story to tell", added Adrian Searle in The Guardian. The show is filled with "cultural collisions, shifts in register and wildly divergent intentions". Le Bas's installation is "full of vitality and surprise", while Kaur's work is bursting with "texture and humour and complexity". As for Abad's "beautiful and painful" laser engravings on marble, you need "hours to unravel the complexities and iniquities" of his work.

Surely the highlight of the entire show is Johnson's "Pieta", said Hallett. Painted on a large canvas made of bark from Uganda, the portrait depicts a mother cradling the body of her adult son – a nod to the victims of knife crime. "There's no question that Johnson must win, but how I wish she had some worthy competition."